Entity Realism

Entity realism, in its original version due to Ian Hacking, postulates a criterion of manipulative success which replaces explanatory virtue as the criterion of justified scientific belief. The article analyses the foundations on which this postulate rests and identifies the conditions on which one can derive a form of scientific realism from it. It then develops in detail an extensive class of counterexamples, drawing on the notion of quasi-particles in condensed matter physics. While the phenomena associated with quasi-particles pass the entity realist’s criterion of manipulative success, quasi-particles themselves are illusions, and can be seen to be so even on the basis of the largely non-theoretical “home truths” that one must be ready to admit as background knowledge. Thus, Hacking’s entity realism is shown to be incoherent.

According to Ian Hacking’s Entity Realism, unobservable entities that scientists carefully ‎manipulate to study other phenomena are real. Although Hacking presents his case in an intuitive, ‎attractive, and persuasive way, his argument remains elusive. I present five possible readings of ‎Hacking’s argument: a no-miracle argument, an indispensability argument, a transcendental ‎argument, a Vichian argument, and a non-argument. I elucidate Hacking’s argument according to ‎each reading, and review their strengths, their weaknesses, and their compatibility with each other.  ‎

Resumo: O realismo entidades de Ian Hacking é defendido como um meio-termo no debate entre realismo e anti-realismo científico. A maior parte da literatura interpreta o realismo de entidades equiparando-o ao realismo fenomenológico de Nancy Cartwright e focando-se no argumento experimental ou argumento pela intervenção oferecido por Hacking. Neste artigo, defende-se a relevância de uma segunda dimensão do realismo de entidades, segundo a qual estamos justificados a afirmar a existência de entidades observadas instrumentalmente, independentemente das leis fenomenológicas associadas a elas. Separando-se o papel da manipulação causal e repensando o papel da observação instrumental, obtém-se uma compreensão mais clara dos argumentos de Hacking em favor da microscopia, tal como uma posição mais compatível com sua filosofia da experimentação. Palavras Chave: Realismo Científico; Realismo de Entidades; Hacking; Representar e Intervir.

Although scientific realism is the default position in the life sciences, philosophical accounts of realism are geared towards physics and run into trouble when applied to fields such as biology or neuroscience. In this paper, I formulate a new robustness-based version of entity realism, and show that it provides a plausible account of realism for the life sciences that is also continuous with scientific practice. It is based on the idea that if there are several independent ways of measuring, detecting or deriving something, then we are justified in believing that it is real. I also consider several possible objections to robustness-based entity realism, discuss its relationship to ontic structural realism, and show how it has the potential to provide a novel response to the pessimistic induction argument.